The Path to F2P Dev Blog #21 on the Star Trek Online Website announces the launch of the free-to-play era in the Trekkie MMORPG will be on January 17, 2012, a slight delay from the previously announced plan for this to come by the end of this year. They also outline the various rewards that will come to subscribers between now and then, and also outline the return of Feature Episode Special Rewards in this post. They also point the way to a recent article on the topic on IGN where Cryptic's Stephen D'Angelo describes how they are using lessons learned from making Champions Online free-to-play in this process, and they are also revisiting how easily the game's best loot is to acquire. "A lot of the things people acquired weren't worth very much to them," D'Angelo says. So the plan leading up to the switch to free-to-play is to make the high-end stuff more difficult to acquire, and the low-end stuff simpler. Put simply, "[We're] revisiting the game's economy."

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's dying, but it definitely didn't burn the house down. It's still a good MMO and quite fun. I'd be very surprised if they closed this one up any time soon. Too much work has gone into it and there are too many 'Trekies' out there with money to burn. This new Star Trek MMO coming out might give it some competition but they're different types of games so they should co-exist. In this instance, more is better. Having a hundred WoW clones obviously detracts from each one, but having more than one Star Trek MMO, each with a different spin on the gameplay, is a good thing and keeps Star Trek front and center in the minds of gamers...

=-Rigs-=

'Who am I?...I am the right hand of vengeance and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart! I am death incarnate, and the last living thing that you are EVER going to see. GOD sent me.'